The family of 19-year old British motorcyclist Harry Dunn, who was killed in England last summer after colliding with a Volvo SUV driven by American Anne Sacoolas, are demanding to know if their son’s alleged killer was a spy.
Sacoolas has been described as a “spy wife” because of her husband’s job on the Royal Air Force Croughton intelligence base in rural England where she and her family were based when the accident occurred. But British media have now reported that she also had a CIA background and that she may have outranked her husband in the intelligence community.
New reports now suggest that Sacoolas is being protected by the U.S. State Dept. because of her own potential intelligence background, not her husband’s. She was whisked out of the country after initially cooperating with British police over the accident, in which she is accused of driving her Volvo SUV on the wrong side of the road straight into Dunn’s Kawasaki motorcyle.
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U.S. government sources told the Mail on Sunday that Sacoolas was “not active” in the UK, though one security source added, “you never really leave the CIA.” (Sacoolas’ lawyers did not respond to requests for comment from the The Daily Beast.)
In December, the British Crown Prosecution Service charged Sacoolas with causing Dunn’s death by “dangerous driving.” Dunn’s family have been fighting to extradite Sacoolas to face charges in the U.K., but the State Dept. has stood firm in their refusal to turn her over.
President Donald Trump even arranged a secret meeting between the family and Sacoolas last year when they were in the U.S. to drum up attention to the case in an attempt to “work things out” on U.S. soil. The family instead said they felt “ambushed” and refused to meet her anywhere but on British soil.
Charlotte Charles, Dunn’s mother, said she and her family are “full of anger” over the way they have been treated by the British government, who they now believe was complicit in keeping Sacoolas safe from prosecution.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously been applauded for taking up the matter directly with Trump, but now the Dunn family members have criticized him for allegedly working to protect the alleged former spy as a favor to the Trump administration.
“How could they do this to us?” Dunn’s mother Charles said Sunday. “We have thrown ourselves into building relationships with the government despite the terrible way they were treating us. We believe in giving people a second chance. But I am livid today and my family are full of anger.”
Charles also told the Mail on Sunday that things were “beginning to fall into place.”
“We have also found it impossible to figure out why the U.S. administration has behaved in the lawless way it has in harbouring Anne Sacoolas,” Charles said. “But no one is above the law. Whether or not you are a CIA officer, a diplomat or anyone else, the Vienna Convention states that you must abide by and respect the rules and regulations of the host country.”
Family spokesman Radd Seiger confirmed to The Daily Beast that he has asked the British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to open an investigation into why they were not told that Sacoolas may have had a past as a CIA officer.
Seiger said in a statement Sunday that it was “high time that the nation can see with full transparency whether or not the government prioritized protecting the identity of the Sacoolas family over the welfare and rights of Harry’s family.”
The family now questions who knew of Sacoolas’ alleged status and whether they are really working to extradite her as foreign service staff have suggested. “Still to this day, the family have seen no evidence that the UK did indeed raise any such objections,” Seiger said. “And indeed fear that they waved her off at the airport.”
